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Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, 1660–1697

Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, 1660–1697

Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, 1660–1697

A. F. Upton , University of St Andrews, Scotland
March 2006
Available
Paperback
9780521024488

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£32.00
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Hardback

    The reading public outside Sweden knows little of that country's history, beyond the dramatic and short-lived era in the seventeenth century when Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus became a major European power by her intervention in the Thirty Years War. In the last decades of the seventeenth century another Swedish king, Charles XI, launched a less dramatic but remarkable bid to stabilize and secure Sweden's position as a major power in northern Europe and as master of the Baltic Sea. This project, which is almost unknown to students of history outside Sweden, involved a comprehensive overhaul of the government and institutions of the kingdom, on the basis of establishing Sweden as a model of absolute monarchy. This 1998 book gives an account of what was achieved under the absolutist direction of a distinctly unglamorous, but pious and conscientious ruler.

    • An innovative study of a subject hitherto inaccessible to English readers
    • The work of a senior, established historian who offers new insights into the government of early modern Europe
    • Reveals Sweden in a new light, at odds with its current image as the model progressive, democratic government

    Product details

    March 2006
    Paperback
    9780521024488
    312 pages
    229 × 153 × 19 mm
    0.47kg
    2 b/w illus. 1 map
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Introduction: the historical background to Sweden's seventeenth-century crisis
    • 2. The formative years: regency and war, 1660–79
    • 3. The defining of the absolute monarchy
    • 4. The financial reconstruction
    • 5. The indelningswerk and the rebuilding of the armed forces
    • 6. The search for external security, 1679–86
    • 7. The consolidation of the absolutist system
    • 8. Completing the superstructure
    • 9. The royal government at work
    • 10. The external territories under absolutism
    • 11. The maturing of Charles XI's foreign policies
    • 12. The last years of the reign
    • 13. The absolutism of Charles XI
    • Bibliography
    • Index.
      Author
    • A. F. Upton , University of St Andrews, Scotland